Classic rock

by Mary Poletti

St. Louisans like classic rock. But don’t take my word for it. Scroll through the FM dial around here sometime. We have four — count ’em, four — classic rock stations.

Spoiler alert: This guy has a lot to do with it.

There’s the grandaddy of them all, KSHE 95, with its iconic pig & its love of sweet electric guitar riffs, toeing a hard-rock line; a former coworker in Quincy who grew up in West County once referred to it as the official radio station of 55-year-old dudes who still have garage bands. There’s KHITS, with its broad format & well-known local voices like the smoky-toned Radio Rich. There’s Oldies 103.3, which plays pretty much everything from the ’60s into my lifetime. With all that saturation in the market, the debut of 100.3 The Brew a few months ago was the facepalm heard ’round the region, although it’s since become the soundtrack to many an afternoon in the garage and/or backyard BBQ in some southerly parts of the County. And we’re not even counting 106.5 The Arch, where it’s not unheard-of to hear Kelly Clarkson’s “What Doesn’t Kill You” & Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog” back to back (I know, because I did on my way home from work today).

Seriously, who really needs four classic rock stations?

A million classic rock fans who will listen to all four of them, that’s who. St. Louis has shown plenty of loyalty to classic rock. Shows like Boston, Bon Jovi, Aerosmith — the mainstays of ye olde Riverport (and it’ll always be Riverport to many of us) usually sell the place out. To say nothing of the insane amount of money we’ll shell out to see the really good stuff at Scottrade. (The Dome, meh.)

St. Louisans reserve a special place in their hearts for a certain former Van Halen frontman, mostly because vice versa. Sammy Hagar loves him some Gateway City. He decided some 32 years ago, when he was greeted with a raucously devoted crowd while headlining a show at the old Busch Stadium, that he owned St. Louis & would always hold it dear. (Frankly, if my first experience of St. Louis were the old Busch circa 1980, I’d fall in love, too.) As much as we love our homegrown celebrities, we go completely ape-crap if someone not from St. Louis starts extolling the virtues of our fair city & adopts it as his own. Not solely because of his athletic achievements do we so deeply love Pennsylvania native Stan Musial, although I must make it clear here that there is no comparison between the Redbirds’ perfect knight & the Red Rocker.

If Hagar is emblematic of Van Halen & Van Halen is emblematic, in so many ways, of the brand of classic rock most likely to be heard on St. Louis airwaves, no wonder we love classic rock around here.

We have our philosophical reasons, too. St. Louisans like classic rock because it’s down in there with the people, just like them. We’re an unpretentious bunch, and classic rock is an unpretentious genre, even if a lot of its surviving stars are still eerily reminiscent of the guys from “This Is Spinal Tap.” It’s music for grilling in your backyard, cruising in your car, working on your car, enjoying the weekend. It lends itself really well to cracking open an ice-cold beer. St. Louisans live for that kind of thing.

Too, St. Louisans like classic rock because it is, by definition, nostalgic. It encapsulates better, simpler days for many of us. A lot of outsiders, and a lot of locals as well, argue that St. Louis has seen better days. Around here, we like to remember the past fondly. Classic rock is the soundtrack to such memories.

Perhaps as much as anything else, classic rock has endured. And so has St. Louis. That’s as good a reason as any for St. Louisans to like classic rock.

Mary Poletti is a marketing professional in the financial industry & a resident of the City’s St. Louis Hills neighborhood. She grew up listening to Steely Dan cassettes in her dad’s Escort, so she’s not really in a position to judge.